Hail Damage

As most of you know, there was a large hail storm in Austin last week and our neighborhood was on the hit list. Luckily my garden avoided damage (and I really don't know how), but the north side of the house and the roof did not. The hail fell at such an angle that it chunked divots out of our siding and the roof looked deplorable.

On the down side, it appears that our siding is just old enough to not be matchable any more. That sucks.

Basketball

So I realize that I'm blogging about basketball. A lot. That is because I have a boring life and the things that are interesting are garden related, so I post over on my garden blog instead.

Blah.

Anyhow, I just thought I'd stop by to note about how stupid I think the little names are for the different levels. Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four.

You see? it's stupid.

Mostly because it's something that I would do.

What's a Bracket?

I joined the work pool bracket thingy for basketball or some other such sport.

So far it's fun.

Of course I had to ask for help on how to even get into the 'selection of teams' thing. But I blame Yahoo for that--"You have been invited to join the Wild Turkey Bracket. Please create a name for your Bracket." What the?

Anyhow, I figured it out. And chose teams. (Haha, Gonzaga, you have a funny name, therefore you will win a game. OOOO Kansas! I know a guy who used to play basketball for Kansas, therefore you will win too! Your team color is orange? no thank you.) And now I'm reaping the fruits of all my labor. I'm in 4th place. which puts me ahead of 4 other people...one of which is a big sports type guy.

But of course there are 4 games going on right now, and my teams are currently behind the 8-ball in all 4 games. Meh, what do you expect when you pick teams based off of logos?

SXSW

I hate south by southwest. There are idiots everywhere. and they don't follow simple directions. Nor do they pay attention to things like stop lights. or pedestrians. And they seemingly don't understand how parking garages work.

I've heard of Out-of-Towners complaining about what horrible drivers there are in Austin. And based off of all the cursing and flipping off I saw today and haven't really seen prior to today, I have come to the conclusion that all those bad drivers the out-of-towners are complaining about are OTHER OUT-OF-TOWNERS.

Sheesh.

Brick

setup: Shunk walks by my desk, looks at me and shakes his head. less than a minute later he's walked by my desk again, stopped, looked at me and shook his head again. On the third time by, I finally ask what's on his mind. The following is a true conversation.

"oh nothing, you'd think it's stupid."

"well, why don't you tell me?"

"OK. I was cleaning out my crawl space this weekend and I found a pile of bricks."

"Okay, I could use some bricks."

"No, that's not the good part. The good part is that they have 'Butler' stamped in them. And when I found them, I thought 'hunh, Katina would like this, it's got her name on it.' and then I thought 'no! that's stupid, she'd think it's stupid.'"

"ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME!? I want one. I want one of these 'Butler' bricks of which you speak."

"you're just saying that."

"No, I'm not. I'm serious. I want one of these bricks. It would make my dad SOOOO jealous."

Behold, the power of CHEESE!

While I'm waiting for my sister in law to call back, I figured I'd blog about the Cheese.

My sister, in her infinite wisdom, decided that for a Christmas present, Shawn and I would be enrolled in a 3-month membership for the Artisanal Cheese of the Month Club.

The first month was the Soft Cheese month. There was a Camembert, an Affidelice, and a Banon de Chalais (at least, that's what I think it was based on the description). The Camembert was good, the Affidelice smelled horrible and was EXTREMELY strong tasting--in fact the only person I could find that really liked it was the Russian at work, and she LOVED it, and the Chalais was pretty good--cream cheese consistency, but not overly strong. I'm not a big fan of Camemberts, so of these three, I'd recommend the Chalais.

The second month was the Cheese and Crackers month. There was a Pecorino Toscano Stagionato, Double Gloucester, and Fiscalini Bandaged Cheddar. They all worked well on crackers, though the Cheddar was best with crackers. The Double Gloucester was great by itself and the Pecorino worked wonders on whole wheat pasta with marinara sauce. I would recommend all of these.

And finally this month, we have the European cheeses. There's Quicke's Cheddar, Bleu d'Auvergne, and Pecorino Maschio. We just had the Cheddar and Pecorino on crackers and they're not quite as good as the ones mentioned above, but they still are mighty tasty. I don't think this pecorino will be as good on pasta, it's definitely not as hard as the previous Pecorino, but it is better with the crackers. I haven't had any of the bleu cheese yet (Shawn won't eat it plain like I will...but he sure does seem to like that stuff on steaks way more than I), but I'm sure I'll post here if it was any good.

Truck Update

I'm lazy, and I just leave you people all hanging and whatnot.

Shawn's truck is fixed. It has been fixed since like a couple days after I posted the post about it being broken.

It was stupid simple.

The little metal connector thingy that connects the ignition to the glow plugs was busted. It's the thing that always broke on his dad's car. When he moved down here, his parents gave him an envelope with like 5 of these little connectors in it because "if your truck ever doesn't start, but the starter sounds like it's turning over, it's probably this connector that's broken. Replace it and you'll be good as new." Price of the connector: Like $5 for 12 (I'm guessing). Equipment needed to replace connector: Phillips screwdriver. Time to replace connector: 5 minutes or less. Time it took for Shawn to diagnose this was the problem: 8 days.

To be fair, the connector was the first thing he checked. It didn't look broken, so he didn't think it was the problem. It took 7 days before he decided to take a better look at it, and that's when he noticed it was broken.

But I still think the Prelimbs thing is stupider.

I have a brick, hey, hey, hey, hey.

Because I am just this cool...

::Slaps forehead:: "D'OH!"

This lovely picture brought to you from one of the top 100 high schools in America, as determined by Newsweek.

Between this photo and the one I took a few years ago, I'm not sure which one is funnier:

Snake Bite

No, I did not get bitten by a snake. I just was scared half out of my mind last night that I was going to be bit.

Okay, let me explain.

For the backstory on why I would possibly think there'd be a snake in the house, you should probably read the first and last paragraphs of my Garden Blog post Here.

And so, last night after we went to bed, IV was wandering around the house mewing loudly. In the past I used to think that she did it because she was looking for something, and she always comes a runnin' when I say something to her. Ultimately, after watching her meowing at lizards outside in the same manner, I realized that she actually meows loudly when she's got a prize.

In my sleep induced state, I yelled something out to the effect of "IV! we're in the bedroom!" And I hear this jingle jangle of her running to the bed and she jumps up and comes over to get her pets. As she's snuggling with me, I suddenly think "oh god, no, she was meowing like she had some great prize. OHDEARGOD. DO NOT TELL ME SHE BROUGHT WHATEVER IT IS ON THE BED WITH HER!" So then I laid there in bed debating on what to do about the possibility of having a snake or a roach or some other undesirable on the bed right next to me. I think I quickly made some sweeping motions with my hands, hoped that I had knocked whatever off of the bed, and then convinced myself that as soon as she heard me call her, she would have dropped whatever she was carrying and come running.

This morning I woke up and found out she had been carrying her purple feathers around the house last night.

Disaster averted.

All time HIGH

So Obama's rating is the highest it's ever been.

Very intriguing.

I like the guy, don't get me wrong.

But we're in the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression (as he keeps telling us).

And his rating is at an all-time high?

hmm...apparently that legalization of marijuana thing happened without the vast majority of the U.S. knowing about it...

Actually, that could turn the economy around--legalize pot, make people smoke up, watch sales of Doritos sky rocket. Economy: Saved.

The downside of Steps 6 and 7

I keep wanting to spend money. It's almost like instead of the goal being to write down a big fat ZERO for the day, I start all freaking out about not having written anything.

Sigh.

Steps 6 and 7

So, I kept track of every penny that came in and every penny that went out for the entire month of February. And then I organized what I spent into categories (Groceries, Eating out at work, Eating out with Shawn, Bills, Investing, clothes, gifts, Random fun stuff, entertainment, etc.)

And you know how you have certain months out of the year in which we you just KNOW that you're going to spend more than you make? For most people this is in December/January because of Christmas. For me, it tends to be February. And it's been like this over the past couple of years--probably because February is about the time that I start getting to the point where I'm like "God! why isn't there any food at work for breakfast?!" and so I go out and buy breakfast for all my coworkers (~$40). Plus, and this always happens, I tend to buy too much stuff for birthdays...And there were 2 birthday parties (~$90).

So, the grand total was that I spent $155.53 more than I earned for the month. And I spent about $300 more than I normally would have--at least one full pay check goes towards just investments (though with the stock market where it is, I'd rather put that into ING or put it towards principle on the house). And most of my second pay check goes toward food and water/trash/car payments. That, of course, isn't to say that I couldn't cut down on the amount of money spent on food--I spent about $165 on groceries and then about $190 eating out. And we obviously don't have to eat out as much as we do--heck, we could choose to never eat out, but where's the fun in that?

Now then, I only have to do this for the rest of my life...woowee.